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The Mercedes AMG team so far is having a race weekend to forget. The team struggled with Fridays practice sessions and continued with qualifying. In Q1, The Merc team started off slow on the hard compound tires, setting times far off the pace setter. With 5 mins left in the first session, both Rosberg and Schumacher switched to the softer tires to avoid early elimination. Rosberg and Schumcher finished the session in 4th and 12th respectively. Lewis Hamilton in his Mclaren Mercedes continued his dominance this weekend and finished in 1st and the last 5 drivers are out.

Schumacher and Rosberg were out first in Q2, but were unable to put in respectable times on their first go. But Hamilton again sets the pace with a 1:21.060. The Merc duo on their second stint start looking a bit faster hoping to finish in the top ten. As the session closed, the best Rosberg could get was 13th, while Schumacher finished 17th. At the end of Q2, the replays showed Michael was on a best lap but had to abandon it because of a thick dust cloud caused by Maldonado, the Williams driver as he went wide exiting a corner. Another shocker exit was RBR's Mark Webber, who also was struggling through out qualifying.

In Q3, it was Hamilton claiming pole position, with Lotus's Grosjean and Vettel rounding out the top 3. The current point leader, Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso could only muster 6th place.

Merc been on a downward spiral this season, they will have to go into damage mitigation this race as the head into the summer break. Unless it rains or drivers retire, I don't see The Merc team breaking the top 10.

Not sure if anyone else caught it, but on the BBC broadcast, they said the Merc are already starting focus on next year's car. If it's true I don't thing its a good idea with 9 races left.

It seems Mercedes suffers greatly from the ban on special engine mapping.
More so then Red Bull.
Although Lewis really has the circuit in his head, he was unbeatable today.

David I don't know what it was. But seeing the onboard clips, Nico and MS, were really fighting the car with understeer. Maybe they're expecting the rain to be heavy and going with a rain setup for the race, dunno. But it's not looking good for them.

Why is the Mercedes team getting worse as the season goes on instead of better?

There's quite a few reasons. Their big problem is the high tire degradation over the length of the race. You'll see MS and Rosberg attack for 5-6 laps on fresh tire, but then fall off the pace quick because the tires are shot. I also think because of the double DRS they employ, really makes it hard to upgrade the car. Any aerodynamic change to the car, might ruin their DRS system. Their whole car is built around it. On top of that Ferrari, Mclaren, and Lotus have been pumping in upgrade after upgrade to their cars, while Merc is still trying to figure out why the tires are burning off. I'm starting to think the Merc have given up on this year's car and now are shifting to next year. Ross Brawn has done that before with Ferrari. If he know there was no way to improve on the current year and was safe where they were he would start on the next season's car. They'll continue to provide updates on the car to see if it will help them next year.

They are not the only ones suffering from it.
Extra handicap off course is they are not allowed to test with F1 cars. So it all haas to be done in wind tunnels and simulations, which makes a dynamic process as heat in tires difficult.

The Perelli tires this year are very sensitive and only operate efficiently through a small window. All the teams are having issues with them to a certain degree. For some reason The Merc car is very rough on the tires and can not keep them in the best temperature window and overheats them very quickly. Also Nico and MS's driving style doesn't help and they haven't been able to adapt their style to the tires.

The Perelli tires this year are very sensitive and only operate efficiently through a small window. All the teams are having issues with them to a certain degree. For some reason The Merc car is very rough on the tires and can not keep them in the best temperature window and overheats them very quickly. Also Nico and MS's driving style doesn't help and they haven't been able to adapt their style to the tires.

That or change the downforce of the car.
Problem there is they lack in mechanical grip to be able to do this without losing ground.

That's where I think the problem is, they can't change much without throwing off the car's aero and double DRS. The problem with these cars is if you change one little thing, you might throw off the whole balance of the car. And with out real testing, you really won't know if it will work or not. Mclaren brought a huge upgrade to Silverstone, but it failed badly. Team Lotus has been testing their super DRS at every practice the last 2 races, just to make sure it will work when the head to Spa next month.